SEO glossary
An always updated SEO glossary with some of the most common terms about SEO. This list contains both the basic SEO terms as well as the most advanced terminology.
SEO Terms last updated August 2018
The most recent and complete SEO glossary on the web!
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1-0
SEO Terminology
A^
Algorithm
In SEO is called the set of programs that determine how is the ranking of websites in Google, for example.
Anchor text
The text that contains the link. This text is very important because it allows us to build link or ‘link building’. Let’s see how to use it correctly for SEO.
B^
Blog
A web publication of periodic updates. It is used for content marketing mainly. Its typical distribution is categories, entries and tags.
Bot or Crawler
Program by which search engines perform their indexing, also known as the spider. Crawl, crawling or fetching is the process of reading web content, mostly by following links, reading sitemaps and other means.
C^
Content in SEO
For SEO, content is understood as Text mainly. Although you can consider images, videos and any other media format a type of content, for SEO the most important is its textual part.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JS (JavaScript)
Files for the design, functionalities and structure of a webpage. Whereas CSS defines presentation, format, layout, colors, fonts and styles, JS defines the behavior or functionality of certain elements.
CTR (Click-through-rate)
In the case of SEO, Click-Through-Ratio the number of clicks, divided the number of impressions a URL has a search engine.
D^
Domain
A domain name is the easy way to enter a website. It’s what masks an IP – 74.125.224.72/ is google.com. It would be very difficult to learn that number.
Domain Authority (DA)
There are domains with a very high relevance to Google, this is called authority. Some for being from large universities or the domains of social networks. There are several techniques to increase the authority of a domain.
Duplicate content
When we have the same content but with different URL, duplication of content can be generated.
E^
External Links (Backlinks)
Links from one website, to a different one. If a site links a page of ours, it would be an incoming link from an external one.
F^
G^
Googlebot
The official name given to Google’s crawling program. For optimal rendering and indexing, always allow Googlebot access to the JavaScript, CSS, and image files used by your website.
Google Ads (Formerly Google Adwords)
It is the main guideline tool of Google. Within it we can make SEM type and display, also pre-roll or video guide.
Google Search Console (GSC)
Formerly known as Google Webmasters Tools is the tool focused on the technical status of the site. Everything related to indexing, uploads, errors and others we can see with this tool.
H^
Head tag
This HTML tag is for framing some important elements in a web page, including metadata for SEO.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is Markup’s most structured language on the internet, used to define the content of the webpage. Markup language defines what each of the component parts of the content are.
HTTP Status Code
A status code is the technical term used to describe the status of data flowing from one server to a client. It’s a form of communication used by computers as a way of saying “I understand your request, and I’m working on it, in the meantime, here’s what I know… [enter status code response]“. They are necessary in data communications in order to ensure proper data flow.
HTTP Status Codes are classified using a three-digit categorization system. The first digit denotes the class of the status code. The second and third digits do not have a categorization system. According to the Internet Engineering Task Force, HTTP status code categorization is as follows:
o 1xx (Informational): The request was received, continuing process o 2xx (Successful): The request was successfully received, understood, and accepted o 3xx (Redirection): Further action needs to be taken in order to complete the request o 4xx (Client Error): The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled o 5xx (Server Error): The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request
Status codes are widely used in the SEO world, especially in SEO audits. They are usually among the first pointers during a website optimization process.
I^
Index(.html) or Home page
It is the main page, the home page, of our site. It is very important for SEO, this is perhaps the landing page with greater ease for SEO. We use it a lot to position a generic word.
Indexing (Google Index)
Process by which a search engine knows a website and takes its information. Google, for example, has one of the most advanced and clear indexing systems.
Internal links
All links within the same site, that is, navigation on the website.
J^
JavaScript (JS)
Often abbreviated as JS, JavaScript is considered the programming language of HTML and the web. When Javascript is used in web development, it allows you to improve your visitor’s experience of the web page by converting it from a static page into one that the user interact with. JavaScript works at the client side thus reducing the work load of the server.
See image below for a simple explanation on the relationship between HTML, CSS and JS.
K^
Keyword or query
The keywords are the terms with which you want to position a client. Each keyword is unique and can be simple or complex to position. There are also the compound words and the generic ones.
L^
Landing page
The arrival page is the only url in which the user “lands”. In SEO, optimization focuses on improving the landing page.
Link Router
Anything between the backlink and your money page. Could be a 301, 302, URL parameter, or similar.
Link Tax
European Union regulation granting media companies powers to charge licensing fees for posting links as-is to their websites. In other words, it’s aimed at forcing platforms like Facebook and Google to pay news organizations before linking to their stories, thus causing a share of the profit.
LSI Keywords
“Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called singular value decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text”. LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) are essentially keywords that are semantically related to a primary or seed keyword.
LSI keyword example
When you search for ‘bing’ in Google, Google will display a variety of documents which include the word ‘bing’. Yet, according to “https://lsigraph.com/“ it will also show semantically related terms such as the following:
- view search history
- see my google history
- msn news
- yahoo news
All of the above are semantically related terms to Bing, as both Google and Bing are search engines. It also considers MSN news and Yahoo news as relevant as Bing is also a news portal.
M^
Meta Description
The description makes a short summary of the landing page.
N^
O^
P^
Ranking or Positioning
When we started to climb positions in a search engine, we attributed that to a positioning job.
Pogo Sticking
Pogo-sticking is defined as going back and forth from a search engine results page (SERP) to an individual search result destination site. In other words, pogo-sticking is when the searcher clicks on a link on a SERP, sees that it’s not what she is looking for, and immediately bounces off by hitting the back button.
Q^
R^
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file is in essence a URL blocking method, meaning it tells search engines which URL’s and filetypes to consider for crawling and indexing. Robots.txt lives in the form of a text file at the root of your website that follows a specific and standardized logic (Robots Exclusion Standard).
S^
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
The SEM is a process in which marketing campaigns are conducted in a search engine directly, a clear example is Google Adwords, where you pay to be in the first positions of a search. It implies direct monetary investment in a platform.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
It is the acronym in English used to describe the process of website optimization to achieve good positions in a search engine such as Google for example. This process has as objective that with a determined search, a website can be located in the first positions. It is necessary to be aligned with the policies of the search engines.
SERP
SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Page. In other words, SERP refers to the search results page that you get when you type any query in Google.
T^
Three-Click Rule
A (unofficial) guiding principle used by many SEOs which means no important page should be more than 3 clicks away from your homepage (or possibly another high authority page.). That said, There are many situations where a 3-click architecture doesn’t make sense.
Tiers 1, 2 & 3
Tiered link building in SEO refers to interlinking hierarchically, thus providing tiered link juice. Tier 1 links are your most powerful links. Tier 2 links are links built towards your tier 1 links. Usually these are lower quality links like automated web 2.0s and GSA spam. Tier 3 are usually trash links made by GSA and other similar tools that are pointing to your tier 2 links. Keep in mind there’s link power dilution as you go up, but this is a way to power up your tier 2 and tier 1 links. This is related to how PBN’s work.
U^
Upload Filter (Article 13)
Another controversial European Union regulation forcing online platforms to scan all content banning copyrighted material before users can upload it. In short, It’s a software that scans all content before publishing, and with the help of a huge database asks: Does anyone else have a right to this video, audio or text? If so, then the filter prevents uploading.
V^
W^
WordPress
The Content Manager or CMS most used in the world. An important reference for blogging.
X^
XHTML
XHTML stands for EXtensible HyperText Markup Language. XHTML is almost identical to HTML but stricter on its sintaxis. XHTML is considered HTML defined as an XML application.
XML
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It’s a language designed to carry data – with focus on what data is, to be both human and machine readable, and is used to store and transport data.